McGruber writes: The Arizona Republic (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/06/13/20120613mesa-engineer-determined-put-space-reach.html) has an update on Morris Jarvis, a Project Manager at Intel who also happens to Space Transport and Recovery (STAR) Systems, a commercial space-travel company, out of his east Mesa, Arizona home.

Jarvis has built the Hermes (http://www.hermesspace.com/), a prototype, proof-of-concept model of a space shuttle, that is 27 feet long with a 21-foot wingspan. He believes that if he were to receive $10 million today, he could have the first test launch in a year.

Jarvis "envisions two tour options for his completed Hermes. In the first, a high-altitude balloon will raise the Hermes to 100,000-plus feet, where customers can see the curvature of the Earth. The second is a rocket-powered option that will put customers in a suborbital trajectory where they can experience weightlessness."

According to the Silicon Valley Watcher (http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/06/morris_jarvis_i.php), Morris likes to describe himself as the "Red Neck Rocket Scientist". He was interviewed in this May 24, 2011 IntelFreePress Video posted at Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN7BHgqbZgg)

There's a reason NASA's Shuttle budget was immense, and that it takes a billionaire like Elon Musk to succeed at space entrepreneurism: It costs a lot of money to design, build, test, redesign, rebuild, retest, [rinse and repeat...] to the point where you're not being criminally reckless to put a human being in a space vehicle.